The Abraham Cowley Text and Image Archive

Gardening in a Circle / The Gardener as Orpheus.
From Giovanni Battista Ferrari, De florum cultura libri IV
(Rome, 1633). Reproduced with permission from the Special
Collections of the University of Virginia.

Over a gate leading into the Orchard, which had a garden on one side and a wilderness on the other, under a statue of Orpheus stood these verses: Of yore how frightful did this place appear,
Here howl'd wild beasts, and satyrs frolick'd here,
When luckily for me this Orpheus came,
Whose heav'nly art has smooth'd my rugged frame,
And rais'd a shade that deities might please.
Labours like his my Orpheus here employ,
Oh may we both each other long enjoy!(John Nichols, The Progresses ... of Queen Elizabeth ..., 3 vols. (London, 1823), 2.59, cited by Brumble, 251)

A German architectural writer of the seventeenth century also notes an Italian garden sculptural program which incorporates a satyr-taming Orpheus (Joseph Furttenbach, Architectura
Civilis [Augsburg, 1628; repr. Hildesheim, 1971], 37, pl. 17).